Topic: PROOF that XSPEC is a SCAM - page 3. (Read 2595 times)

Firstly, a couple of things:

a) You state that you are a “senior software developer” - please provide verifiable credentials for this claim
b) I have met with @jbg in person and he is not in his 20s but somewhat older
c) Yes, XSPEC is based on and cloned from the SDC codebase and this has been stated from day 1 and discussed endlessly. Please see the original thread at https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/xspec-spectrecoin-untraceable-tx-ring-signatures-tor-integration-1704473 and the discussion there. At the time of XSPEC inception I was a follower of SDC and thought that the focus on a market integration was the wrong way to go and wanted to separate this out and continue a focus on privacy features. The main sticking point in the initial phase was to integrate Tor which is something SDC never did.

Your claim that “initially XSPEC made no claims of their coin being a fork of this project” (SDC) is simply not true. You haven’t followed the project for long enough.

Specifically addressing points raised:
The ability to set ring size to 1 for ‘spectre tokens’ was implemented as a way to be able to transfer ‘spectre tokens’ back into XSPEC without having to rely on the correct denominations being made available in the ‘spectre token’ pool. This was / is an issue as the network is growing and the pool of anonymous token denominations were insufficient to combine together to ‘re-create’ the desired amount of XSPEC. The ring-sig system is used for ‘spectre tokens’ and not for ’normal’ Spectrecoins. XSPEC uses two different tokens, i.e. Spectrecoin and ’Spectre tokens’ and the ring-signatures are used to sign transactions made in ‘spectre tokens’ and not Spectrecoin.

Very short explanation of ’Spectre Tokens’
‘Spectre Token’ / ST. ST can be minted / created whilst destroying ‘Spectrecoins’. The creation of ST outputs a group of STs totalling the same value (minus the transaction fee) of the destroyed Spectrecoins. That is, the creation of 1 ST will destroy 1 Spectrecoin. ST takes the form of anonymised spendable outputs on the Spectrecoin blockchain and each ST output has its own private and public key in the form of a key image. In the Spectre wallet the ST you are able to spend will appear in the ‘Private Balance’ field. Your ‘normal’ Spectrecoins will appear in the ‘Public Balance’ field. The spendable ‘spectre tokens’ will be the members of the ring to sign anonymous transactions. This requires a large number of spendable ‘spectre tokens’ in the pool. This is being improved in 1.4 by better splitting / combining algorithms. So, the ring signature discussion is reserved for ‘spectre tokens’ only and does not apply to public Spectrecoin balances. A senior software developer should have made this point in my view and if you had reviewed the history both of SDC and XSPEC you would see why a temporary ring size = 1 was allowed.

Also, it seems to me that @preshpr1nce fails to understand what obfs4 is for. XSPEC implemented a native version of Tor into the code base (this was not mentioned in your detailed professional review @preshpr1nce). Native meaning that you do NOT need to have Tor installed on your computer, XSPEC will connect using Tor and ONLY Tor when you start the wallet. All the XSPEC network runs under Tor and there are no exit nodes anywhere. This was the first phase of improving on SDC and we did that. It then turns out that Tor traffic might be blocked so we found the obfs4 protocol which is essentially to “hide” or “obfuscate” Tor traffic to make packet inspection more difficult. obfs4 is an addition to the Tor implementation.

In addition there has been a lot of work initially around compiling and SDC was working on similar issues for quite some time for people who are old enough to have followed SDC a while back. So, there is a lot of work around building the code as well as the code itself and making this more efficient.

So, for a senior software developer this is a pretty poor review. Now, @preshpr1nce - your credentials please and how could you miss out the fact that we integrated Tor into the code base in your review? How may lines of code was that again?

it really was once, but that dude deserved it for his behavior

Complete lies. Beachguy is blunt, not a “complete jerk.”

JBG is one of the most patient people I’ve ever seen on the internet. There’s zero chance he would call someone a “cunt” in the old slack channel. He answered all sorts of questions, often repeatedly.

Here is where XSPEC is headed. These are two updates from JBG himself this evening.

OK @everyone, I have a short update regarding project structure. Even before I needed to take some time off, I had been discussing with a number of longstanding community members about expanding the core team and formalising some kind of "governance" over the project. Given that me taking 10 days off caused such a large disruption, it's clear that these changes need to happen quickly so that the project can keep its momentum even if one member needs to take time off. We now have an idea of what we'd like this to look like, and I'd like to share this with you all. *First,* we're going to officially grow the core team to include several more people, including at least one more developer but also people with project management and marketing skills. <@384779540540424213> is also back in good health and will be participating actively in the core team again. *Second,* we are introducing bounties to encourage much wider participation in the development of the project. This will be managed via GitHub Issues - anybody will be able to "claim" an issue and upon their successful completion of it, the bounty will be paid to them. This will be funded from the staking donations. I'm working on identifying the areas where I think bounties can be best applied and will create issues soon, but I'd also like to encourage _anybody_ who has ideas for fixes or improvements to propose bounties. The core team will select the bounties that will be funded from staking donations, but anybody can fund a bounty if we don't select it and they want it to be worked on. We hope that these changes will "decentralise" development more effectively and also increase our rate of progress. _A specific update about v1.4 will follow in the next days._

Also, @everyone, once the core team is in place I want to hand control of incoming donations over to a designated person who will manage the bounties and make _results-based_ payments to me and Bryce as well as fund anything else that needs funding. This designated person will be chosen by the core team collectively, in a public and transparent way, and will be some longstanding, well-known community member. I want to make this change for several reasons, (1) I think philosophically a clean separation of the funding and the development is a good idea, (2) the constant accusations directed at me are taking a significant toll on my wellbeing and my ability to work effectively, and hopefully this will help, (3) the designated person should be able to more clearly weigh the various needs for funding (marketing, core developers, bounties, maybe exchange listing fees, etc) rather than having it managed by a developer with a more narrow view of the project.

In their Slack channel Beachguy is complete jerk. 99% of time he is rude and just attacking peoples for their opinions.
And as I recall, jbg have called other users as cunts there.

I didn't avoid a single point, I cleared them all up.
What you are trying to do now is confuse people who don't have enough technical understanding to read what's being said.
My guess is this'll be less than 5% of people.

Sad sad person, to make a claim that a full version release on GitHub being observed is not a good measure is as stupid as it gets, I'm not here to be nice to shills, I'll keep my nice nature for honest people, you're not honest.

You're having 0 impact here, should just give it up, to sum up your argument, "The code on GitHub is not a good measure".
Does any one actually believe this?

Hey, what's wrong, someone was yelling on you? No!  Let us stop talking about code not being available, and let us talk about code which is avaiable! Tor integration, supportes obfs4, has stealth addresses,
 and ring signatures, which will start being useful when stealth becomes default. Still better than Verge, no?

Otherwise I do think that XSPEC as a project started going same route as DO and Verge, which is using lies for the sake of popularity, and hype. If this doesn't change, and if they don't get their shit together it will be dust in my eyes too, not that it matters.

Also, whatever happens with XSPEC, it has yet a long way to go to reach level of assholness of Verge and DO developers.

I am not shilling, but you are being an asshole, and you are doing same thing as mandica does. What you said has nothing to do with my post, and you have totally avoided all points I made.

You are shilling, the above quote is utter bs, GitHub has 100% of the code for all released versions of XSPEC, simple as that.
Going forward, you would have to wait for a release to get a full picture of the release, it could be the developers are holding back on the commits etc, but on past releases this is not the case, the entire full source code is up there.

Also from an open source project that the community is buying in to, you SHOULD commit you work and not delay as long as he has on new releases, leaves people with no clue of progress, still though like I said above, the released versions give you a complete idea.

That's one of the big reasons why xspec didn't convince me when i was looking for another privacy coin to invest in.Their development and marketing is non existant compared to other coins like deeponion.And we all know what happens to coins who lacks good marketing.

First of all, i own a shit ton of spectrecoin, so it's in my best interest for it to succeed. However, you claim to be the founder of XSPEC and have yet to defend the coin from a technically standpoint. You just been jabbing at any irrelevant info you can find to deflect from the topic at hand.

 As much as i hate it, this guy laid out a claim filled with lots of verifiable proof and i just read thru the entire 6 pages and have yet to see one individual actually defending the platform with info that could be verified. The whole thread is made up of ppl claiming fud ( i guess stating your opinions with verifiable proofs is now considered fud)

 I do understand that all codes might not be available on github but it doesn't negate he fact that the op post is to the tee. No matter how much someone wants the sky to be yellow, it's not fud to state that the sky is blue. Simple as that. What he laid out is currently true.

  I bought my spectre stash of a shill from a friend, i did no investigation into the coin. honestly i invested cos i expected it's growth to emulate deep onions (and yes i know deep onion is prob shit too), so this is my first time really investigating the coin and it does not warrant the countless shill ( i never really paid it any mind but yes there has been a ton of shill on this forum)

 So Mr or Mrs founder, rather than averting from the topic at hand, you should admit that he is right and you can either retort with an improved tech or keep whinning/averting like a common shill

Wasn't 'Verge' previously called 'Dogecoin Dark' at some point? hmmmm... - pls don't promote Verge as being something special - the marketcap is just due to John McAfee fake tweets and was Verge not in fact a DOGE clone? XMR was a clone of BCN using the same tech but then being successful in going their own way. I agree that XMR has very strong features but pls don't mention Verge.  

I do not believe in this evidence. It seems to me that the coin is very promising. Private coins will soon be in high demand. I invest in this coin.

While I agree that bad, or shady things had happen, and are maybe still happening, IMO you are implying, assuming few things, not sure why. For example you say you will follow github, as if github updates are some kind of mettrics one can use to estimate successfullness or usefullness of a project.

You said for example you will continue checking github (what is ok of course) to estimate how is XSPEC as a project doing (Not really ok). I say as long as there are no security issues, and as long as these don't remain unsolved for too long, IMO XSPEC is a solid, even unique product among crypto currencies.

Below explanation of my view, and argumnets or 'arguments' you decide.

Bare with my please for a moment, below is the explanation why am I mentioning the following again.

XSPEC is well rounded coin. It is the ONLY coin atm with full, proper Tor integration that I am aware of. ShadowCoin did not have this, Monero doesn't have this. Nodes communicate inside of Tor network as onion services, use no exit nodes, and no other currency with optional Tor can achive this. So it is not only about Tor being default or not. It is also very easy to enable Tor obfuscation, obfs4 which is still considered to be the best method at the moment.

It has stealth addresses, uses ring signatures, thus it hides sender and receiver infro, and to some extent if obfuscates trx amounts, but not as good as Monero.

Just maintaining this state by fixing security issues is a good job, and doesn't make this tech or XSPEC as a project less useless.

You implied things here, that successful project, or useful product has constantly do evolve by adding new features and code (What is not case and I have mentioned popular Open Source projects as examples below.), and also that ShadowCashe developers should be used to further develop 'their' tech because they are understanding it better. I am stressing here that you also implied that ShadowCoin/XSPEC is technology developed by ShadowCashe developers.

Let us now first consider what have they (ShadowCashe devs) actually done here, and later let us check how other Open Source project work, function, and what is common in world of open source.

ShadowCashe. Do you think ShadowCashe developers have written, and designed, developed all, or most of their code? First it is a BTC fork. They have added two features to it besides developing wallet GUI, which is pretty trivial task for average developer. Stealth addresses and Ring Signatures. Did they developed these? Ring Signatures are algorithms developed almost 20 years ago, Stealth Addresses and trx are much newer and IIRC these were developed by Peter Todd previous ByteCoin and Bitcoin developer (And just look now where the Bytecoin nowadays is. It could be easly considered scam by your criteria because situation is definitelly worse compared to XSPEC, no one is maintaining it AFAIK.).

 Ring Signatures implementation of ShadowCashe developers had serious security issue (Despite them having open source code to use as a reference, as is or however), which was discovered by Monero developer, who was later paid (by ShadowCoin) to help them fixing it, what he did.

But let us check other open source projects like Linux distibutions, and let us see who is considered to be developer, what are common practies etc. Ubuntu for example, is 95% Debian, and Debian is 99% upstream code. Very, very, small part of a Linux distribution is developed by distribution developers, yet anyone who accuses these people of not being developers doesn't actually understand the situation. Putting all these parts together, testing , maintenance, it requires skills.

Long term distributions are esspecially appreciated among developers yet these types of projects don't change much or at all over years, except for changes which are necesaary to deliver security updates. Is Ubuntu 16.04 LTS bad distribution because it is three years old, and runs even older software? It is capable of doing what is meant for, most serious bugs are fixed, it is stable. It is usefull, works, and people don't have to upgrade to new versions of software and libs what requires one very often one to goe trough different configuration files, changing things, learning new syntax etc. How is this different to XSPEC and his features/abilities?

Are developers who 'build' distributions and software, who 'just' compile, package, or develope ebuilds or compile scripts, than test that upstream software actually not developers?

Not important that much but let me mention jbg again. gunner for example suggested how all projects jbg has forked and contributed, are just hobby projects, and how easy it is to do such things. IMO it is not that easy. This is not only about writing 20 lines of code for some project. One actually must understand a project or at least a part of it one is interested in or one is going to contribute, play with or whatever.
Of course I am not trying to proof with this that he is a mathematition/cryptographer or something, he never claimed for him self something like that (At least not that I have seen.). But I do think he is capable for the same kind of work ShadowCashe developers did. You and gunner have raised their work/capabilities to completely different, higher level, which I can not agree with. When I said I think he is capable, this still doesn't mean I think he is doing it (e.g. working full time).

Point of typing all this wasn't to claim shit didn't happen, but to give people bit different perspecitve on what successful project is, or can be.


I would really like to hear your opinion about 'private' coin projects you consider to be inovative, developed by high skilled experts, and worth investing? Or just any other project you consider OK. Beside Monero of course, although I muss say it doesn't look like Monero developers are in a hurry with I2P implementation. There is also another project I follow, still in development 'MobielCoin.com' (I have mentioned the address because there is another project, possibly a scam also called mobilecoin mbccoin.com.). It has amazing crew, so it should be amazing. Beside these two I would really like to hear you opinion regarding this.

I’m just quoting your last post instead of the one you quoted me on.

When calling something a scam, and calling out a specific person, yes I do deem it important to actually know what their name is.

We already knew V1.4 was late, what that guy tried to say was that on a Saturday JBG said V1.4 would be released within 48 hours when he actually said he would release an UPDATE within 48 hours. He did come on and give updates.

And to you, where in my post did I mention anything about Monero? I said Verge is shit. Never mentioned Monero once and I am of the crowd that XMR is by far the best privacy coin currently available. To say XVG is better technologically is a blatant lie. If you’re going to sit here and say XVG has better tech than XSPEC (not even counting whether from SDC inception or since XSPEC) then you clearly have an alterior motive. It took the XVG devs like 1 year with 3+ delays to release optional stealth addresses (Wraith protocol) which XSPEC has had since inception. It’s not natively integrated with TOR so it has exit node attack vectors. While you sit here and call out XSPEC, I’d love to hear a rebuttal that proves XVG has better tech. I’m 99.9% sure it doesn’t, but it does have a 40x higher market cap.

So I've sent mandica a private message to see if she has any control over the developer, but from what I'm hearing jbg is now the one fully in charge of XSPEC and if that's 100% the case and mandica can't get a new developer to take over, this project is as good as dust in my eyes.

I'll wait and see how her reply goes, so far her postings in here have cleared up nothing and appear to be more shilling, if she can clear things up about the development and what's being done about jbg I'll be honest in my approach and let the community know, for now though things still remain as you see in this thread.

I over looked the developer on this one, 6 commits from him vs 166 from jbg and he's done a lot more, I focused on jbg due to the recent findings and knowing he's the current and only developer, I guess it does prove me wrong in one of my earlier comments where I said to mandica to prove me wrong that they've had a developer in the past, this is the proof here so I'll edit my comment out in relation to that, I want this thread to be accurate.

Still, my initial findings on jbg's work remains as is.

The thing that needs to be looked at now by mandica if he/she is the true owner, is what you're paying for in jbg, your coin is going to tank unless you sort this out, the true scam here is jbg, get a new developer, I'll monitor the github and if I see change I'll make a new thread clearing things up, for now though you have a developer who cannot deliver anything and unless this is changed it's going to be a sad ending for XSPEC and a waste of your money.